THE WITCHERY OF ARCHERY.* Tills little book has opportunely made

its appearance in England just as the archery season is over, when archers are fresh from recent successes, their bows and arrows carefully stowed away in cosy aschams for the winter, and their leisure hours free to read of what has been accomplished in America. The author is him- self a practical archer, and writes enthusiastically on all that appertains to the "royal sport." He is as expert with quill as with " whistling grey-goose wing," and readers who know little of archery, and care still less for it, will be entertained at his lively adventures and graphic descriptions. No doubt English archers will smile at his outspoken devotion to his bow and arrows, and his extravagant delight in the pursuit of game of any sort, but they will not fail to respect the zeal and perseverance given to so good a cause.

The witchery of archery, as here set forth, will not be felt, or at least realised, so readily on this side of the Atlantic as might appear at first. But for any who may be tempted to the other side by the glowing accounts of wild out-door life, or the promise of plentiful and honest sport with bows and arrows, we can imagine nothing that would give a more thorough change, a healthier life, or such constant and varied amusement. It was amid the great lakes, and the vast, unfrequented tracts of land in Florida and Georgia, and the short-grassed prairies of Indiana, that the author and his brother roamed and hunted with so much keenness and satisfaction to themselves. Modestly beginning with woodpeckers and rabbits, they soon went on to ducks, wild- fowl, and plover ; nor were they content until they had aimed at and killed such higher game as white herons and blue, a cata- mount, deer, panther, and bear. This country does not offer such sport to any who would take it, nor indeed is the climate attrac- tive enough for such living-out-of-doors expeditions.

The book consists of a series of chapters in no way connected with one another, but all bearing on archery in some shape, many of them being reprinted, we believe, from the pages of Scribner's Magazine. We think if they had been confined to the personal adventures and experiences of the author, those on archery miscellanea might have been omitted with advantage, for they have just a suspicion of padding about them. And this in- formation, besides being second-band, is not always accurate, and therefore detracts from the value of what is new and interesting in the book. It is chiefly taken from Mansard's Book of Archery, published in 1840, and our author jumps to the conclusion that the same practices prevail in England now as then, and evidently regards its statements as infallible. Tempora mutantur. Most of the feats recorded by Hansard sink into littleness by the side of what Ford and Fisher have been doing of late years. Butt-shooting is not a " favourite game of archery in England " now-a-days, for one scarcely ever meets with any other mark than the ordinary four-foot target. Her Majesty the Queen does not present a prize annually to the Royal Toxophilite Society, nor is that Society under her patronage, though the Prince of Wales is president and a member. Highfield's arrows, perfect as they are here represented to be, are not used by any of the leading archers in this country, Aldred and Buchanan, of London, and Muir, of Edinburgh, making by far the best tackle in existence.

The author quite believes Robin Hood could hit a willow-wand stuck into the ground at a distance of a hundred yards, almost when he pleased. Any one who has ever shot at that range knows the difficulty of seeing an arrow so far off ; if the arrow has struck the target, it is generally possible to see in which colour it is, but if it has missed and remains in the ground close by, it is not easy to distinguish it. The absurdity of hitting so small an object as a willow-wand at that distance, and at will, is palpable to any one. The writer of this review has seen an arrow which had been placed upright in the ground cut in two at a distance of ten yards by a member of the Royal

Toxopbilite Society (shooting with an arrow the same size as the mark), and this was regarded as a feat of some importance, not to be repeated, that day, at least. Space will not permit us to criticise at any length the instructions laid down for taking aim. Hansard is quoted again as an unquestionable authority in the matter, and • The lritehery of Archery. By Maurice Thompson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1878.

our author agrees with him, and commends him for what he says. We do not. Briefly, their theory is to look with all one's might at the object shot at, and to loose at that instant of time in which the sight suddenly concentrates itself upon the target's centre. Ours is to fix one's direct vision upon the point of aim, which must be ascertained by a knowledge of the range, and let the arrow go as soon as it is fully drawn and its point intersects the line of eight. We do not see how the former method can bold good, because the direction of the arrow must vary with the strength of bow, the length and weight of arrow, the force of the wind, and the final position of the right band ; and if one always

looks at the centre of the gold, how is it possible to know where the arrow may be pointing ? How would our author succeed if

the target were at such a range that the requisite elevation obliged the bow-band to intervene between his aiming eye and the centre of the target ?

We turn now to the chapters on the actual experiences of the author. Here he is at home, and generally on terra firma. With- out a practical knowledge of shooting birds on the wing with bow

and arrows, it is perhaps presumptuous to raise questions, and it certainly is not easy to gauge the amount of skill or knack re- quired in the performances set before us. If, however, we consider how frequently archers in this country, female as well as male, hit the centre (nine inches in diameter) of the target at sixty yards, it would seem strange if our American sportsman, living bow in hand for days together, did not occasionally make a good shot at twenty-five or thirty yards, particularly as birds were frequently either very plentiful, or else little frightened at the first shot. One creditable feat was when at the first shot he split a wood- duck's head in half at twenty yards, its bright head only being visible amongst some great, drooping, aquatic leaves, "shining through a small circular rift, not largar than the palm of one's hand." On another occasion, he contrived to get within about sixty yards of a great snowy heron ; he was in his boat, hidden behind grass and weeds, and the bird had alighted on a high, broken branch of a tree. The first arrow went ten feet wide of the mark, and the bird merely turned his head to one side, to glance at the arrow as it passed. The second arrow went close to its neck, but thanks to the almost noiseless flight an arrow takes, it only jerked its head, and did not move a wing. Three more arrows flew past the unconscious bird, and then the sixth did its work :—

" The dull recoil-sound of my bow was followed by a quick whisper, and then a dead, solid blow, a chuck,' once beard, never forgotten. The feathers puffed out, and sailed slowly away in a widening ring. The big wings opened wide and quivered a moment, then the grand old fellow toppled over, and came straight down with a loud plash into the water. I yelled like a savage, —I couldn't help it ; it stirred me to the core."

But the most marvellous feat of all was when he shot at and hit a blue heron, that rose within twenty-five feet of where he stood. With the arrow sticking in its thigh, and after whirling over and over a few times, the great bird flew up perpendicularly ; but instead of coming down again, as an English bird would have done, it continued to mount up,--up,—up,—and then, after rapidly diminishing in size, it finally vanished altogether. Once, after going in search of deer, and finding none, the author and his brother came upon a bear, which they managed to slay between them, after an expenditure of five arrows. It was during this expedition our hero lost himself in a dense swamp, a situation he has thus described :—

" It was the paradise of snakes. I must have seen a thousand mocassins. They were everywhore,—on logs, on tussocks, swimming in the water, writhing together among the tangled roots of trees, dry- ing themselves on the cypress-knees, gliding and squirming about my feet, lapping their red forked tongues, and leering at me from every conceivable place ; you would not give credence to the whole truth if I should tell it. For four terrible hours I waded round and round in that venomous place, shouting myself hoarse, and blowing my whistle till my lips were sore. Finally, I found a little ditch like stream, and following this, it led rue out."

How Gustave Dore would have revelled in such a scene,—at a proper distance !

There are many such descriptions, and they, together with the actual adventures and the anecdotes connected with them, make up what is most worth reading in the book. But between them and the second-hand-information chapters, there is some original and extravagant writing on the benefits arising from archery that will amuse lady readers, though at the author's expense. Cer- tainly he has here drawn his long-bow too far and overshot the mark. " City ladies " will fail to see the charm of roaming the "green fields and shady woods, and shooting at tufts of grass or the slender stems of the young trees ;" nor would he, we fancy,

care for stalking such inanimate objects. And these same ladies will hardly be consoled with the reflection that, once they can shoot, they need have no fear of tramps or robbers, for a " drawn bow in the bands of a resolute woman

will bring the boldest villain to a halt, or to his death, if necessary. An arrow from a thirty-pound bow (i.e., a lady's) will pass entirely through the body of a man." Even this accomplish- ment would scarcely be sufficient inducement for them to master

the rudiments of archery. Then again, knowing his own tender regard for bow and arrows and the injunctions he has laid down for their careful keeping, we were much startled by the following advice to ladies :—" If you wish to sketch, take your bow and arrows with you, so as to shoot when you are tired of the pencil

and if you are fond of botanising, your bow will serve you for a staj; and a strong arrow makes a first-rate utensil for digging up small plants." To have given such counsel as that, our author must have become demoralised by too intimate an association with Tommy, his stolid, half-nude Indian attendant, who once re- marked to him, "Any stick do for bow—good arrow dam heap work—ugh !"

Although this book lacks cohesion and sequence, it does not on that score lose in interest, and one might go far before finding another in which the heart and feelings of the writer had so slipped into his pen. It was clearly no little pleasure to him to unburden his mind of fifteen years' archery experiences, and make it the excuse, as he admits himself, for lazily living again through the scenes engraven in his memory. Still he was half afraid of what the critics would say, trying to disarm them by stating his conviction that they were honest fellows, whilst reading his tales of a careless archer and listening to the twang of the bow-cord and the keen hiss of the flying arrow. In conclusion, we give one of his stories, told to clinch his theory that "neither poverty, nor shame, nor hunger, nor dissipation, nor anything but death, can ever quite destroy the merry, innocent, Arcadian, heathen part of our nature, that takes to a bow and arrow as naturally as a butterfly takes to a flower :"—

" One day, not long ago, my brother and I were practising at a target on a green lawn, when a miserably-clad and hunger-pinched tramp ap- proached us. Rags and dirt could not bide, nor could hunger and humilia- tion blunt, the edge of a certain manliness of bearing, as he touched his torn hat and paused near us. Could we give him a bito to oat, or a few ponce to buy him a cheap dinner? Ho was very hungry. The old story. We sent a lad who was scoring for us to my house to inquire if any cooked victuals were in the pantry, and then resumed our shooting. Tho tramp stood by watching us. Finally, as if impelled by an irresistible interest, he said, ' Archery is a noble sport.' We turned and looked at him in sur- prise. He waved his hand in a peculiarly graceful way, and in a sad voice said, On Brighton sands I have soon good shooting. I have shot there myself.'—' In England ?' asked Will.—' Yes,' ho replied ; 'I am a gentleman.' Will smiled doubtingly. ' Would yon let me shoot once 1" he said. Will handed him his bow and arrow. He took them eagerly, almost snatching them. For a moment ho stood as if irresolute ; then quickly fixing an arrow on the string, drew and lot fly. The move- ments were those of a trained archer. Tho distance was kitty yards, and ho hit the gold in its very centre."